I’ve been told, so often and so stridently, to feel this and to feel that and to feel for the downtrodden of the world, that I find I no longer feel anything at all. I don’t think I’m alone in not caring. I think caring and compassion, now that it has been institutionalized enough to demand caring and compassion, has finally found its limit…Compassion can never be made compulsory and cash-flow positive at the same time. Whenever and wherever compassion has been made compulsory the people soon find they no longer have care or quartas to spare.

Perhaps what our friend in Seattle is feeling, is the onset of some deplorable disease.

Or perhaps it’s a recovery. A recovery from that wretched infestation known as…dramatic pause…drumroll, please…

It’s our modern plague. If you’ve ever done a good deed, and then just kinda hung around awhile to see if anyone noticed, and if so, how many, and what they thought about it all…you have been infected. And you probably still have it, unless you’ve since gotten in touch with your inner dark, uncaring, cynical bastard.

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty” in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called “crisis strategy” or “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven’s early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. “Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one.
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This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements — mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown — providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.
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The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York’s welfare crisis horrified America, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in “the end of welfare as we know it” — the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements. Both Cloward and Piven attended the White House signing of the bill as guests of President Clinton.
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Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.

Let’s not negotiate with these people. No matter what. Let’s just renounce this supposedly-noble objective of trying to find a midpoint or “common ground.”

I’ve spent a lifetime having it beaten into my head that only crazy old men in plaid shirts crusted with their own drool babble on about anything that comes close to “communists trying to ruin our way of life and tear down our country.”

But as I learn more about the turmoil that was taking place around the time of my birth, I find the facts point more and more toward this as the proper way to look at things. You don’t need to drink vodka and wear a big fur hat with a red star on the front to be a commie.

And negotiating with one is like negotiating with a rattlesnake. It is the straddling of a divide that stretches from one universe to a wholly incompatible other universe. It is a compromise between order and anarchy, creation and destruction, good and evil. It doesn’t take much at all to deserve a spot at a conference table, but one unalterable standard must be that you have to want a spot at the conference table. And commies don’t want one. They just want to tear things down.

Victor Davis Hanson takes a look at some more sudden hairpin-turning liberal looney logic that subtely deluges us lately:

Traditional conservative custodians of the budget can’t say much. They are largely discredited on matters of finance. During the last eight years of Republican prominence in Congress and the White House, the government borrowed as never before.

Liberals in turn have suddenly rewritten their own economic history. They used to claim the great surge in government under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression with deficit spending and federal jobs programs.

But many historians have argued instead that unemployment and slow growth remained high throughout Roosevelt’s first two terms — until the Second World War scared us all into a fit of national mobilization that alone ended the ongoing 13-year depression between 1929 and 1941.

Now here’s the irony: Liberals suddenly agree that only the Second World War stopped the Depression, after all! So they now argue that we need a new New Deal far greater than the old New Deal. In other words, they want to re-create the urgency of World War II to get government to grow and spend big-time.

Their argument is that if FDR failed to stop the Depression, it wasn’t, as conservatives insist, because he turned to unworkable government solutions, but rather because he didn’t try big enough ones.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 62% of voters would prefer fewer government services with lower taxes. Nearly a third (29%) disagrees and would rather have a bigger government with higher taxes. Ten percent (10%) are not sure.

Kinda funny. When President Bush’s approval rating is the same, 29 percent, we are instructed to believe the 29% are a bunch of…well…whatever. Stupid, drunk, crazy, either way the 29 might as well be zero.

On this issue, however, the 29% manage to end up running the whole freakin’ election. We’re all just squabbling on how exactly we’re going to get the 29% exactly what they want, even though 62% of us aren’t thrilled with it by a damn sight.

Hey — how many among that 29% who want “higher taxes” are talking about themselves? I mean golly, there’s just no way they could be talking about passing on the “higher tax” to someone else, is there?

Neal Boortz makes a point in only two hundred words. Maybe that’s still too long for some of the whiners who manage to trip across The Blog That Nobody Reads…and bitch away about my stuff being too long…

But if 200 words is beyond the capacity, I’d have to say that says more about them than it does about Neal.

It’s tough to “tease” something as short as 200 words. My best effort is…

Your “right to health care” would require some other person to give up a portion of their life or their property to either treat you or to provide you with drugs or medical implements. The Constitution does not provide for another individual to be indentured to you in this manner.

…it’s important that you understand why white people are so in love with free health care. The first and most obvious reason is “they have it Europe.” White people love all things European, this especially true of things that are unavailable in the United States (Rare Beers, Absinthe, legal marijuana, prostitution, soccer). The fact that it’s available in Canada isn’t really that impressive, but it does contribute to their willingness to threaten to move there.
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But the secret reason why all white people love socialized medicine is that they all love the idea of receiving health care without having a full-time job. This would allow them to work as a freelance designer/consultant/copywriter/photographer/blogger, open their own bookstore, stay at home with their kids, or be a part of an Internet start-up without having to worry about a benefits package. Though many of them would never follow this path, they appreciate having the option.
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Though their passion for national health care runs deep, it is important to remember that white people are most in favor of it when they are healthy. They love the idea of everyone have equal access to the resources that will keep them alive, that is until they have to wait in line for an MRI.

This Sharon Jasper is the same Sharon Jasper profiled in the New Orleans Times-Picayune sulking in her government-subsidized apartment with hardwood floors and HUGEtastic flat-screen television and complaining that it’s a “slum:”

Well, yeah. There’s kind of an inversely-proportional relationship going on between the diagonal measurement of television sets, and the net worth and annual income of the people who own them. It breaks down when you rise above the level of self-sufficiency, since I see that wealthy people can have television sets of any size, or none at all. But at the sub-dependent levels, where public assistance is needed…

I’ve got a mild buzzing migraine that I can tell is going to get worse throughout the day, and I’m in the mood to be pithy. Let’s see if I can veer off my more usual schtick of the zillion-word essay.

John McCain, President Bush, and I are in agreement. This is rare. The Senator went on record to say he agrees with the President’s veto decision against expanding the children’s healthcare program.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, told CNN Wednesday he agrees with President Bush’s veto of legislation expanding a children’s health insurance program, saying the bill provided a “phony smoke and mirrors way of paying for it.”

“Right call by the president,” the Republican White House hopeful told CNN’s John King. “We’ve laid a debt on these same children … that we’re saying we’re going to give health insurance to.”

The bill, which would cost $35 billion over five years, is meant to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to provide coverage to an additional 10 million children.

Today the President had an opportunity to sign a bipartisan bill that will bring health care to 10 million children in families struggling to make ends meet. Instead, President Bush used his cruel veto pen to say ‘I forbid 10 million children from getting the health benefits they deserve.’

And my beef, here, is about the radio airwaves. The boob tube bluster. The water cooler chit-chat. Surely, the “average” American sees things Speaker Nan’s way, right? Not a single thought about the expansion of the welfare state, it’s all about the poor precious babums vs. the “cruel veto pen.” Hells bells, if democracy worked we’d have fully-funded door-to-door baby formula delivery and diaper-washing service, with not a single thought as to who’s paying for it.

I am NOT buying it.

I have been scolded, as a “blogger,” for jousting with liberal straw men that don’t really exist. And this time, I’m inclined to believe the scolders are right. I think, if you can find me some people who see this Speaker Nan’s way, you will be sampling from a truly elite whacko-fringe group. I think at this point, most people understand that the Government doesn’t “bring” a damned thing — it confiscates. What it does bring, it confiscated from somewhere else. At this point, if you still have need for it to be pointed out to you, you’re never going to get it and I don’t think there are too many people in that club.

That goes for those who are in favor of the bill President Bush vetoed, by the way. I’m calling ‘em out. I don’t think they give a damn about the chiiiiiiiiilllddddddrrrreeeeeeeennnnn. That’s just an excuse. Oh, here and there you’ll find some weepy chuckleheads who are going to honestly wonder how the poor whelps are going to make it now, but by-and-large this is something different. It is a debate about what is to become of America, and her ideals, and people on both sides of the fence see it that way.

Next subject: Why did this vet cut down the Mexican flag? Was he really upholding the law, and his country, or is he bigoted against Mexicans?

I predict some folks are going to swarm out of the woodwork and advance the notion that Jim (insert last name here after verifying correct spelling) is just a racist bigot, or at least that is what they honestly think about him. Not buying it. Flying the Mexican flag over the U.S. flag is against the law in Reno, and furthermore, Veteran Jim’s comments on Mike Gallagher’s program are a hundred percent correct. We have become culturally spineless on the matter of standing up for our nation — it’s customs, legacy, principles, language, and border. We aren’t cowards, and we’re not trying to save our hind ends; rather, we’re afraid of being accused of racism. The thing is, though, I’m not buying that any of the folks who stand ready to accuse others of racial hatred, really mean it. Sure they do the accusing. But it’s nothing more than an activist tactic.

Why in the world should they not resort to such a tactic — it works like a charm. What would have happened if Veteran Jimbo had not popped on to the scene with his Iraqi Freedom Knife.

A fun mental exercise in which I’ve invited people to partake, those who are worried about the “racist” angle, involves albinos. Suppose our nation bordered another, that was populated by albinos. Leave all other aspects in the illegal-immigration debate…every single minute, insignificant, arcane detail…unchanged. Just pretend it is albinos climbing the fence — people with lighter skin, instead of darker skin. In fact, while we’re at it, apply this exercise to the “Is Islam a violent religion or not?” issue and to the “Should we profile by race at the airport?” issue.

Leave everything else unchanged, just think about the skin color. Make it lighter instead of darker.

You’ve changed everything. What we “can’t” think and “can’t” say, suddenly, now, in our thought exercise with the albinos, we can. And what we can say now, in this otherworldly thought-exercise, suddenly, we can’t. People who are in reality opposed passionately to racial profiling, suddenly, are going to be in favor of it. People who are opposed to Veteran Jim taking down the flags with his big knife in our universe, in that thought exercise, suddenly would have no problem with it at all.

And all you’ve really changed, is that instead of these issues involving people with darker skin, you’ve tweaked the issues so they involve people with copy-paper-white skin and pink eyes.

We’re supposed to be all a-twitter about racism. What is racism, but an unreasonable weight placed on the factor of skin color in the making of decisions?

So I’m not buying the racism angle, not even a tiny little bit. I do not think we’re doing any worrying about racism at all; not even as much as we should be. What I think we have been doing, is practicing it. People take patently absurd positions on these issues, allowing foreign flags to be flown above their own country’s flag when it’s clearly against the law to do so, demanding that Scottish grandmothers with red hair be frisked at the airport in the name of “randomness” — because of dark skin. It’s the hue that results in these decisions that, otherwise, logically make no sense whatsoever.

What really amazes me is that while both Mexicans who cross the border illegally, and Muslims who support terrorist organizations in some way, can lay claim (with some tiny kernel of truth) to the “I’m doing it because I’m so poor and put-upon” defense — there is very little in history to connect the two societies with each other. In fact, you could make the argument that the most meaningful and tangible connection between the two, by far, is the fact that we in America happen to be arguing with each other about both those demographies at the same time. They haven’t got anything to do with each other. Or very little.

But they both have darker skin. Darker than — that hated Archie Bunker guy.

And so the issues that affect them, we treat exactly the same way. The situation has deteriorated to the point where the United States has a border less meaningful than the border of…just about any other country on the face of the earth. It makes no sense. It’s supposed to make sense to the people who disagree with me about it, people with a different point of view, perhaps buying into the “doing what is necessary to feed their families” angle. I don’t think that’s it. I’m not buying it. I think the open-borders types don’t give a damn about the anchor-babies. They just want cheap labor, they’re acting out of white guilt, or both.

It’s racism pure and simple. They’re insisting on utterly irrational decisions about people with darker skin, just because of that darker skin, and for no other reason. Take the skin color out of it through the “albino exercise” and their position becomes indefensible, even to them.

We’re supposed to be a color-blind society. We’re supposed to stand up to, and confront, racism wherever we find it. We haven’t been worthy of conferring that kind of compliment onto ourselves; the big “We” seems to like racism just fine, so long as it’s the right flavor.

Well…thus ends my attempt to say something pithy. Gonna go take some Aspirin and get my day started.

“I challenge all Oregonians to experience first-hand what thousands of Oregon families go through everyday,” said Governor Kulongoski. “Budgeting just $1 a meal each day for food, and trying to make that food nutritious, is a difficult task that sadly is a reality for too many Oregonians and their families.”

Did you know half of all food stamp recipients have been receiving the aid continuously for 8½ years or more?

There is a common misperception that the Food Stamp program provides mainly temporary, short term assistance. This is untrue. The majority of Food Stamp recipients at any given point in time are or will be long term dependents. The overwhelming majority of Food Stamp spending is received by individuals who have been or will be participants in the program for multiple years or even decades.

The democrat Governor of Oregon has been snookered into some church program to prove that being poor sucks. I think that statement just about captures it…

Governor to Try a Food Stamp-Size BudgetArticle Tools Sponsored By
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 22, 2007

SALEM, Ore., April 21 (AP) — Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski and his wife, Mary Oberst, are used to eating the best their state has to offer: salmon, huckleberries and mushrooms foraged from the Cascade mountains.

The coming week will be different. They will spend just $3 a day each on their meals, $42 in all, to match the amount spent by the average food stamp recipient in Oregon.

Mr. Kulongoski, a Democrat, and Ms. Oberst are the most prominent people yet to take part in a “food stamp challenge,” a trend sponsored by religious groups, community activists and food pantries across the country.

Those who have done the challenge say shopping on such a tight budget requires plenty of planning, a reliance on inexpensive staples like legumes, beans, rice and peanut butter and a lack of more expensive protein and fresh fruits and vegetables.

Meeting friends for a slice of pizza or a cup of coffee becomes a nearly unaffordable luxury.

“On the spiritual side, when I did eat, I was more present,” said State Senator Jonathan Harris of Connecticut, who just finished three weeks on food stamp funds. “Usually I’m watching TV, shoveling things in, not thinking that I am blessed.”

It is a politically delicate time for the food stamp program. The Bush administration has proposed several cuts, among them taking food stamps from about 185,000 people because they receive other noncash government assistance.

The Department of Agriculture budget, as proposed, would also eliminate a program that gives boxes of food to about half a million elderly people each month.

The administration has proposed some changes hailed by food stamp supporters, like excluding retirement savings from income limits and encouraging recipients to buy more fresh produce.

Wow! What a great idea! If the governor would permit me, I would like to suggest how he can enhance his illustration of the plight of the poor during this week on food stamps:

1. Adopt — just for the week — a few children you cannot afford to raise.
2. Completely abandon your work ethic for the week.
3. If you do have a job, show up late, leave early and don’t hit a lick at a snake while you’re there.
4. Smoke cigarettes. After all, a higher percentage of poor people smoke than rich people.
5. Become uneducated.
6. Buy lottery tickets.

My suggestions would have more to do with producing a family locked in to living on food stamps. I like the complete lack of education, it’s a good start. Let’s see…

Someone once said as women go, so goes society. If you have a daughter, pay close attention to the prospective son-in-law. No talent allowed. Her boyfriend’s tallest ambition in life, should he have one, ought to be to get the band back together.

In your extended family, designate a White-Knight and a chronic screw-up. Everyone should agree that nothing is ever the screw-up’s fault. They should all plunge their life saving’s into bailing him out of his latest pickle, and if any work remains to be done it ought to be the job of the White-Knight. And if there’s blame to be cast, it should go to the Knight.

If nobody can agree who-is-what, it should fall to the screechiest, most irrational woman to designate those roles. That seems to be the way most families do it.

Oh yeah. Nobody’s allowed to learn anything from the way the White Knight does things. For a role model, everyone should be looking at the screw-up. Kids should be taught to pay him lots of attention. Worship him. Do everything the way he does it. He’s bound to be the “fun” one, after all.

Watch lots of movies with Doofus Dads. Kids should be taught that during that narrow band of years, where they feel like they know everything — they really do.

Do a lot of screeching, bellyaching and kibitzing about “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

Oh, I almost forgot: Nobody ever talks to their kids anymore about the ethics involved in missing work. Take advantage of that. Miss work when you’re not sick. Take your kids to the beach, or to the park. Be sure and let them know what you’re doing — how you have to be sure wherever you go, you can’t be filmed or photographed, and why that is. Find out how many sick days you’re allowed, and let your kids in on that arithmetic. The lesson is that work is the last priority.

That goes for everyone. If anyone waits around until they’re really sick, before they take time off work, show your kids that he’s the bad guy and he doesn’t really love anyone. If he’s male, spend your sick day watching a Doofus Dad movie with your kids.

Ah! That reminds me…spending money. That’s love, you know. No money spent, nobody loves anyone. Paycheck comes in, bills are paid, groceries are bought — if there is some money left over, it should be spent on fun things. If it stays in the bank, someone’s being mean and greedy.

The breadwinner should be constantly harrassed. Show your kids that this is a life of misery. Life is not about providing for anyone or doing the things other people need to have done or fulfilling responsibilities…show your kids that the purpose of life, is to have fun.

Embrace militant feminism. Make sure your daughters and your sons are clear on this point: Nobody has spent their energy well if they’ve sought out any direction in life — they should be rejecting direction in their lives. Sons should be taught that nobody needs them for anything, they aren’t there to facilitate, to coordinate, to organize, to prioritize, to produce, to defend, to protect. If they want to go after something out of whatever’s left, with whatever time they have on the planet, they can go right ahead. Daughters, similarly, are taught not to direct, to nurture, to feed, to clothe, to educate, to chaperone, to supervise. Again: If they want to go after something out of whatever’s left, go right ahead. Pointlessness to existence is the name of the game.

Teach your kids to make fun of nerds. Ideally, any class-mates they have who pull down better grades, are “teachers’ pets” who “brown-nose” the teachers for their superior grades — they didn’t work any harder, certainly! And your kids should be wondering why we still have a patent office. Anything that needed to be invented, has already been invented.

Pointlessness. Drive it home. We’re here to go to work late, come home early, do nothing in between, and take as many sick days off as we can so we can “love” each other by spending all the money.

And when the cupboards are bare and there’s nothing to eat and no money to buy it with, make sure your kids understand: They don’t need to pay any attention to other families who have food and money, to find out what’s been done differently. There’s nothing to be learned there. Other families with food and money, instead, should be paying attention to you. After all. You’re the guys who have it really tough.